Chandra Levy case revisited in TLC special

In this May 28, 2002 file photo taken at the Modesto Centre Plaza in Modesto, Calif. photos of Chandra Levy are on display as musicians, right, stand by at the memorial service for Levy.

Photo: Debbie Noda, Associated Press

Is any crime ever really solved? If you watch a lot of television, you may have good reason to ask that question. From Jack the Ripper to the Petersons, Drew and Scott, television has fed off true crime stories for decades. It doesn’t matter whether the case is open, shut or cold, true crime shows keep the story going.

If the feeding frenzy seems especially intense these days, it is thanks, in part, to the deserved success of Ryan Murphy’s “The People vs. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story.” But heavily covered crime stories are a natural because you already have the attention of the audience, not to mention the raw materials in the form of archival footage from when the case was originally covered by the media. It’s great economics, no matter how you look at it. All you have to do is promise “new information” and throw a couple of hyperventilating journalists in front of the camera to call fill-in-the-blank as the crime of the century.

There are three basic ways to revisit true crime stories: dramatize, as Murphy did; employ a documentary style, using archival footage and contemporary interviews with those involved in the crime; and a mix of the two, which you’ll find on HLN’s “Forensic Files.”

Any of the three formats can be effective, and all three can be manipulated and misused for what TV cares most about: dramatic effect to hook viewers. “Chandra Levy: An American Murder Mystery,” premiering Monday, Sept. 4, on TLC, uses the third approach, mixing archival footage, re-created scenes and interviews with key figures in one of the most famous cases of the new century.

In May 2001, Robert and Susan Levy of Modesto were concerned because they hadn’t heard from their daughter in a while and that was unlike her. She was in Washington, working as an intern with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Now she was missing.

The Levys had to wait an entire year to have their worst fears confirmed, when their daughter’s skeletal remains were found in Washington’s Rock Creek Park. They had already informed the police that their daughter had been having an affair with their congressman, Rep. Gary Condit.

Even before the body was found, the story sparked unrelenting saturation coverage by the media. A missing intern, an alleged affair with a married congressman: What else did you need?

Condit never admitted the affair, but his political career was over. As far as voters in his district and the general public were concerned, he didn’t have to say the words.

Eight years after Chandra’s remains were found, a Salvadoran immigrant named Ingmar Guandique who was in the country illegally was arrested, ultimately found guilty of Chandra’s murder and was sentenced to 60 years in prison.

To the astonishment of many, the case heated up again in 2015 when Guandique was granted a new trial. Last year, federal prosecutors said they wouldn’t retry him but, instead, deport him.

Those are the basic facts, but the devil is in the details.

“Chandra Levy” reminds us that no matter how methodical crime solving may seem in fictionalized TV shows, it’s a pretty messy business. As with the Scott Peterson case, media pressure can be a factor in how and perhaps whether a case is solved.

Among those contributing to the “Chandra Levy” documentary are journalists Jane Velez Mitchell, Diane Dimond, Sylvia Moreno, Michael Doyle, Connie Chung and Dylan Howard, editor of the National Enquirer and executive producer of “American Murder Mystery.”

Susan and Robert Levy are, of course, featured in both archival and contemporary footage, demonstrating that the depth of their loss and determination to keep their daughter’s memory alive have not diminished with time.

Among the missing are Condit, of course, and the original prosecutor in the case, Amanda Haines.

The “usual suspects” — not literally, but the figures we all remember from the coverage — dominate the documentary, but “Chandra Levy” relies most heavily on two: Vince Flammini, Condit’s former driver and self-described “best friend” (“I mean, who knows better than the driver?”) and Joe McCann, the private investigator hired by the Levys.

Flammini, who was fired by Condit in 2001, says that his ex-boss used to go to Rock Creek Park all the time and that he tried to tell that to “the FBI and different people but they didn’t want to hear it.”

“I mean, jeez, you don’t think of your best friend as a murderer.”

McCann provides some useful information, such as the observation that while it was assumed Chandra was jogging in the park when she was attacked, the trail she was on was a horse trail, strewn with rocks and not a place you’d expect to find a runner.

He also points to a blanket, tossed into a corner of Levy’s apartment, suggesting that she had left in a certain degree of haste to go to Rock Creek Park on the day of her death.

Moreno gets Guandique on the telephone while he’s being kept at a transitional facility before deportation. To no one’s surprise, he denies murdering Levy.

The documentary suggests it has something to add to the case, but ultimately, also to the surprise of no one, it doesn’t really.

You have to ask if these shows have any real value to anyone, other than, of course, the networks that create them. There’s nothing very new in “Chandra Levy” — Flammini has little credibility and a first-year law student could tear him apart in five minutes on the stand. McCann is principled, but of course, principles don’t always play well on reality television, do they?

It should go without saying that virtually every entry into the overcrowded true crime field promises shocking new information. Sometimes it’s actually new, but it’s rarely shocking.

We get no new insight into Guandique and of course Condit still won’t talk about his relationship with Chandra.

Our hearts ache all over again for the burden Robert and Susan Levy have had to carry, and the documentary is probably useful for them to remind the world that their daughter lived and had a bright future.

All we get really is a dubious chance to relive the media frenzy that turned tragic loss into some perverse form of entertainment for tabloid TV.

By the way, next up for “An American Murder Mystery”: a three-night “television event,” “Casey Anthony,” premiering on Sept. 9.

True crime, for better or worse, is a gift that just keeps on giving, even if the package is mostly empty.

David Wiegand is an assistant managing editor and TV critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. A native of Rochester, N.Y., he holds a bachelor's degree in English and a master's in journalism from American University in Washington, D.C.

He joined The Chronicle in 1992 as a copy editor with the arts section and became entertainment editor in 1995 and executive features editor in 2006. He took on the job of television critic in 2010, writing regular TV reviews and columns not only for The Chronicle but for other papers in the Hearst chain.

Before The Chronicle, he was managing editor of Dole Newspapers in Somerville, Mass., and editor of the Amesbury (Mass.) News.